Chris Anderson on why the Internet of Things finally makes sense

Chris Anderson of Wired, Long Tail and DIY Dronefame posted this week about his recent mindset shift towards the Internet of Things becoming a real possibility. He references the continued strength of the Open Hardware movement and projects like Arduino as the main driving forces behind the change.

"The old vision of the Internet of Things came to us from the likes of Cisco and Nokia, which were trying to promote end-to-end connected device standards (that used their gear, natch). Think of that as the 'Information Superhighway" era of the net, those days in the early 90s when the wired future was going to be brought to us by AT&T and Cablevision.

The new vision is more akin to the Web, which was brought to us by, well, us. The engineers agreed on some basic open standards -- HTTP, HTML, TCP/IP -- and we did all the rest, creating the Web with our own ideas, uses and creativity.

Today, the new Internet of Things model is based on simple open standards: Arduino, WiFi and Web APIs. The model is open innovation and community creation. And the devices are being created by regular people with their own needs, not big companies."

He followed this the next day by bringing up the 'Geocities of Things', a phrase coined by Andy Huntington and promoted in several talks by Russell Davies. Using the hideous self made web pages of the early web as a reference point (remember the animated 'under construction' .gifs?) to the stage we currently see in the first wave of DIY home IoT projects like Spaduino.

"...just like Geocities in that from the outside, to professionals, it all looks like rubbish. It all looks silly, trivial, why would you make that, I don't understand it. But the people who made it, it's absolutely brilliant, it's the most fun they've ever had and it's particularly useful to them."